A husband-and-wife team from California reached the Pacific Ocean after a 4,900- mile-cross
-country walk, becoming the first to backpack the American Discovery Trail in one continuous
walk.
Marcia and Ken powers, of Pleasanton, started the travel across 13 states, through 14 national parks and 16 national forests on Feb. 27 from Cape Henlopen in Delaware. Nearly eight months later, the excited couple walked through water into the Pacific Ocean at Point Reyes, a day ahead of time.
“We are a little sad that a great adventure is over. It was a fantastic adventure. And now we go home and just do housework. It's really sad.” Marcia, who said she's in her 50s, and her 60-year-old husband traversed cities, desert, mountains and farmland before reaching the Pacifics alone with arms around each other' s backpacks.
They overcame deep snow in the East, a quicksand in Utah, close lightning strikes in the Mid- west and strong desert sandstorms in the West while averaging 22 miles a day and taking only four days off. But they enjoyed the French history of St. Louis' the beauty of the Colorado Rockies and the kindness of strangers they met along the way. They particularly remember two brothers ---- a
doctor and dentist-------who put them up in their homes, after terrible days, and a motorcyclist who gave them water after they failed to find any on Utah's lonely Wah Wah Desert.
“Americans are truly warm-hearted and wonderful people.” Marcia Powers said. “We got to meet people that we would never meet in our daily living at home. We got to touch it with our feet and hands and smell all its scents and hear its wildlife. It' s an amazing country,” she added.Which of the following about couple's walk is TRUE?
| A．The walk covered more than 13 states. |
| B．The walk lasted about half a year. |
| C．The walk didn't meet any desert. |
| D．The walk might end before October 27. |
The underlined word “traversed” in the third paragraph means “____________.”
| A．enjoy | B．move across, through or over |
| C．overcome | D．look at |
According to the text, we can infer that during the walk the couple __________.
| A．were treated warm-heartedly by the local people |
| B．never stopped to have a rest |
| C．were ever caught in a heavy rain and became ill |
| D．felt the quicksand in Utah was very interesting |
The couple went through many places except ____________.
| A．big rivers | B．desert | C．hills | D．fields |
Hu Li's heart sank due to the color of the air. Driving 140 kilometers from Tianjin City to Beijing last week, she held her breath as the air became a charcoal grey haze(炭灰色的阴霾).The 39yearold businesswoman has lived in Beijing for a decade, and this past month, she said, brought the worst air pollution she has ever seen. It gave her husband a cough and left her sevenyearold daughter housebound(足不出户).“My husband as well as I is working here, so we have no choice,” she said. “But if we had a choice, we'd like to escape from Beijing.”
The extended heavy pollution over the last month, which caused punishment in return for a day last week－called the “airpocalypse” by internet users－ has largely changed the way that Chinese think about the country's air. On one day, pollution levels were 30 times higher than levels considered safe by the World Health Organization (WHO). Flights were cancelled. Roads were closed. One hospital in east Beijing reported they had treated more than 900 children for breathing issues. Bloomberg found that for most of January, Beijing's air was worse than that of an airport smoking area.
The smog's (烟雾) most threatening aspect is its high concentration(浓度) of PM 2.5 － particulate matter that is small enough to breathe deep into the lungs and enter the bloodstream, causing breathing infections, lung cancer and possibly damaging children's development. The WHO has estimated that outdoor air pollution accounts for two million deaths per year, 65% of them in Asia.Which conclusion can we draw from the first paragraph?
| A．Hu Li is living in Beijing. |
| B．Hu Li traveled to Tianjin for business. |
| C．The haze is harmful to people. |
| D．The pollution is the worst in Beijing's history. |
The haze affected people mainly in________.
| A．the way they traveled |
| B．the opinion about national air |
| C．the way they lived their life |
| D．the life style of internet |
From the passage we know high concentration of PM 2.5________.
| A．can lead to choke |
| B．can cause heart cancer |
| C．will damage children's development |
| D．will damage people's organ |
What's the best title for the passage?
| A．Hu Li's attitudes to Beijing's haze |
| B．The damages of Beijing's haze |
| C．WHO suggests improving Beijing's air |
| D．What caused air pollution in Beijing |
When you put down your pens at the end of the college entrance exam, 12 hard years of study will have come to an end. Forget your studies for a while. It's time to enjoy yourselves!
There are many ways to celebrate this special month of graduation. You can have photos taken with your classmates and teachers, or dine out together and exchange gifts.
High school students in Western countries such as the United States and Canada usually have a prom to mark their graduation. It’s to mark the time kids turn into young men and women. After the prom, teenagers either go to college or find a job. It means they are no longer as dependent on their parents as they were before.
At the prom, boys usually dress in dinner jackets and bow ties, though many different types of formal clothes are worn. Traditionally, girls give boys matching boutonnieres (a small collection of flowers they pin to their jackets). Girls traditionally wear formal dresses, or dress to shock or be noticed, in shiny or brightly colored materials.
Common prom activities include dining, dancing, the crowning (加冠) of a prom king and queen, and just talking to friends. In some cases, high school students collect funds for their class prom through the four years of their high school.
High schools in or near large cities may rent ballrooms at expensive hotels or, to be unusual, on a pleasure cruise boat.
But often costs are cut by simply using the school gym. Students make a lot of effort to decorate the gym to make the event special. The music played at the prom will be the most popular kinds, like rock and hip-hop.
The students elect the Prom Queen. She is partnered with a Prom King who is elected similarly. These are great honors that the pair take very seriously. The two dance with each other to celebrate their election.
Sometimes teachers and parents also go to the prom. But others like to go with friends, to whom they are soon going to be saying goodbye.
If you like the idea of a prom, why don't you and your classmates organize one for your graduation?Which of the following is an economical way to hold the prom?
| A．Renting a ballroom. |
| B．Holding it in the school gym. |
| C．Taking a cruise boat. |
| D．Wearing formal dresses. |
Which of the following clearly indicates that prom is very important to students?
| A．They take pictures at the prom. |
| B．They wear formal clothes or special clothes. |
| C．Music is played at the prom. |
| D．Teachers and parents attend it. |
Why do some students attend the prom with their friends?
| A．They will part with their friends in a short time. |
| B．They don’t like to be accompanied by their parents. |
| C．They don’t want to depend on their parents. |
| D．They want to be elected by their friends as the Prom King or Queen. |
What is the writer’s purpose to write this passage?
| A．To tell an interesting experience of high school students. |
| B．To tell how the western students spend the last days of high school. |
| C．To introduce serval ways of western students’ killing time. |
| D．To tell how western high school students usually celebrate graduation. |
Free Fun Guides
What is new about this year’s Museum Day?
| A．People will get free tickets online. |
| B．Two museums offer free admission. |
| C．People can visit a museum for free. |
| D．People can visit museums online. |
How is National Public Lands Day different from the other three events?
| A．It comes on Sept. 25. |
| B．Visitors may choose what to visit. |
| C．Admission is free for people. |
| D．Visitors may do some volunteer work. |
How can kids get a free book?
| A．By reading eighty books at any Barnes & Noble. |
| B．By downloading and printing out a passport. |
| C．By signing up a summer reading program and choosing one of the books they have read. |
| D．By signing up for a winter reading program. |
Which of the following shows the similarity between Museum Day and Free Night of Theater?
| A．They take place once a year. |
| B．They last for the same length of time. |
| C．The tickets can be used in any U.S. city. |
| D．The same number of free tickets is given away. |
I have always known my kids use digital communications equipment a lot. But my cellphone bill last month really grabbed my attention. My son had come up to nearly 2,000 incoming text messages, and had sent nearly as many. Of course, he was out of school for the summer and communicating more with friends from a distance. Nevertheless, he found time to keep a summer job and complete a college course in between all that typing with thumb.
I was even more surprised to learn that my son is normal. "Teenagers with cellphones each send and receive 2,272 text messages a month on average, " Nielsen Mobile said.
Some experts regret that all that keyboard jabber(键盘闲聊) is making our kids stupid, unable to read non-verbal cues such as facial expressions, gestures, posture and other silent signals of mood and attitude. Unlike phones, text messaging doesn't even allow transmission of tone of voice or pauses, says Mark Bauerlein, author called The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future.
Beyond that, though, I'm not sure I see as much harm as critics of this trend. I' ve posted before on how I initially tried to control my kids' texting. But over time, I have seen my son suffer no apparent ill effects, and he gains a big benefit, continuing contact with others.
I don't think texting make kids stupid. It may make them annoying, when they try to text and talk to you at the same time. And it may make them distracted, when buzzing text message interrupt efforts to noodle out a math problem or finish reading for school.
But I don't see texting harming teens' ability to communicate. My son is as accustomed to nonverbal cues as any older members of our family. I have found him more engaged and easier to communicate with from a great distance. because he is constantly available by means of text message and responds with faithfulness and speed.What is Mark Bauerlein ' s attitude to texting?
| A．It is convenient for teens to communicate with others. |
| B．It is likely to cause trouble in understanding each other. |
| C．It is convenient for teens to text and call at the same time. |
| D．It will cause damage to the development of teens' intelligence. |
What would be the best title for this passage?
| A．For Teens, Texting Instead of Talking |
| B．For Parents, Caring Much for Their Kids |
| C．Disadvantages of Texting |
| D．The Effect of Communication |
What does the underlined word "distracted" in the fifth paragraph mean?
| A．Confused. | B．Absent-minded. |
| C．Comfortable. | D．Bad-tempered. |
Picture a typical MBA lecture theatre twenty years ago. In it the majority of students will have conformed to the standard model of the time: male, middle class and Western. Walk into a class today, however, and you’ll get a completely different impression. For a start, you will now see plenty more women—the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, for example, boasts that 40% of its new enrolment is female. You will also see a wide range of ethnic groups and nationals of practically every country.
It might be tempting, therefore, to think that the old barriers have been broken down and equal opportunity achieved. But, increasingly, this apparent diversity is becoming a mask for a new type of conformity. Behind the differences in sex, skin tones and mother tongues, there are common attitudes, expectations and ambitions which risk creating a set of clones among the business leaders of the future.
Diversity, it seems, has not helped to address fundamental weaknesses in business leadership. So what can be done to create more effective managers of the commercial world? According to Valerie Gauthier, associate dean at HEC Paris, the key lies in the process by which MBA programmes recruit their students. At the moment candidates are selected on a fairly narrow set of criteria such as prior academic and career performance, and analytical and problem solving abilities. This is then coupled to a school’s picture of what a diverse class should look like, with the result that passport, ethnic origin and sex can all become influencing factors. But schools rarely dig down to find out what really makes an applicant succeed, to create a class which also contains diversity of attitude and approach—arguably the only diversity that, in a business context, really matters.
Professor Gauthier believes schools should not just be selecting candidates from traditional sectors such as banking, consultancy and industry. They should also be seeking individuals who have backgrounds in areas such as political science, the creative arts, history or philosophy, which will allow them to put business decisions into a wider context.
Indeed, there does seem to be a demand for the more rounded leaders such diversity might create. A study by Mannaz, a leadership development company, suggests that, while the bully-boy chief executive of old may not have been eradicated completely, there is a definite shift in emphasis towards less tough styles of management—at least in America and Europe. Perhaps most significant, according to Mannaz, is the increasing interest large companies have in more collaborative management models, such as those prevalent in Scandinavia, which seek to integrate the hard and soft aspects of leadership and encourage delegated responsibility and accountability.What characterizes the business school student population of today?
| A．Greater diversity. |
| B．Intellectual maturity. |
| C．Exceptional diligence. |
| D．Higher ambition. |
What is the author’s concern about current business school education?
| A．It will arouse students’ unrealistic expectations. |
| B．It will produce business leaders of a uniform style. |
| C．It focuses on theory rather than on practical skills. |
| D．It stresses competition rather than cooperation. |
What aspect of diversity does Valerie Gauthier think is most important?
| A．Age and educational background. |
| B．Attitude and approach to business. |
| C．Social and professional experience. |
| D．Ethnic origin and gender. |
What does Mannaz say about the current management style?
| A．It is eradicating the tough aspects of management. |
| B．It encourages male and female executives to work side by side. |
| C．It adopts the bully-boy chief executive model. |
| D．It is shifting towards more collaborative models. |
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